Just a quick note to myself as well as maybe helping others out. If you open a PDF file in Microsoft Edge (Windows 10 RTM version or latest Insider Build 10547) and try to print the PDF file only one or two pages come out from the printer, over and over again.
For example if you print a 15 page PDF file, the first page of the PDF file comes out over and over again, or the first two pages over and over again.
Solution: Open the PDF files using Adobe Reader and print without problems.
One of the things you can and should do before moving to Windows 10 is to deploy Internet Explorer 11 on your existing machines. But if you think that means you are safe in terms of then moving to Microsoft Edge and be running with all the latest and greatest of web standard, you’d better think again. Why?
Well ever since Internet Explorer 8 the setting “Display intranet sites in Compatibility View” has been enabled. Really what that means is that although you have moved to IE11 the chances are very likely that all your LOB web apps and all intranet based sites have been running in IE7 mode the last 10 years or so, at least after moving to IE8. That’s not very good to be honest.
The solution to really be future-safe is to make sure to unset that setting to actually run all your sites in IE11 mode. This can of course be done using Group Policies by setting the policy “Turn on the Internet Explorer 7 Standard Mode” policy. However when doing that expect things to break so I strongly advise you do some thorough testing Before deploying that setting to your entire organization.
Most books written about Microsoft products are very focused on one single product. A book about Windows Server covers all you need about the server OS itself. A book about System Center Configuration Manager covers everything you need to know about ConfigMgr in its bubble and a book about a Windows client covers everything you need to know about the client itself.
The book Enterprise Client Management using Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 covers not only the Windows client (Windows 7 as well as 8.1) but how to manage it using Windows Server 2012 R2 and the System Center 2012 R2 products. So all in all a complete scenario on how to manage your Windows clients in the enterprise in a very effective way using Microsoft management tools available.
The book is now also available on Kindle as of mid April 2015!
Consider the following scenario: A user has a Windows client running UE-V (User Experience Virtualization) and IE 11 and everything in regards to Enterprise Mode in Internet Explorer 11 is working fine. The user then gets a new machine or logs into another machine let it be a client or for instance Remote Desktop session and then Enterprise Mode in IE11 does not work at all. The URL:s defined in the Enterprise Mode XML ruleset file are not applied when the user browse a web application defined for Enterprise Mode.
The problem is a consequence of UE-V roaming the Enterprise Mode registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Enterprise Mode where it lists CurrentVersion with the current version of the XML file that is being used. So basically that means that Enterprise Mode think it has already applied the current ruleset although it has not.
Solution / Workaround
The workaround to prevent this scenario from happening is to exclude that registry key from being roamed. In the MicrosoftInternetExplorer2013.xml file scroll down to <Application> <Name>Internet Explorer 11</Name> and add an additional exclusion to the other exclusions already listed under <Registry>:
<Exclude>
<Path>Main\EnterpriseMode</Path>
</Exclude>
For users that are already affected by the problem one must delete the registry key mentioned above and make sure that it is not synced back from the IE package in the SettingsPackages location (MicrosoftInternetExplorer.Version11 package).
To demonstrate how Windows is being optimized over time (i.e. from Windows 7 x86/x64 to Windows 8.1 x64) I have made a very fundamental performance benchmarking of the Windows memory consumption. The benchmarking has been done in a virtualized environment. Before measuring the below numbers the clean installation of Windows has been left idle for 5 minutes, then had a reboot. This was been repeated three times after which the below numbers were gathered:
The conclusion is that Windows 8.1 in its x64 edition is basically consuming as much memory as the 32-bit version of Windows 7 and running smoother with fewer processes running. Windows 7 64-bit is consuming some 100 megabytes+ compared to Windows 7 32-bit.
Many thanks to all of you who attended my session yesterday. So here is a summary of the key takeaways from my session “Preparing for Windows 10” at TechDays Sweden 2014 November 19th. Consider this an action list in what you can do today to prepare yourself form Windows 10.
Yeah, it is so boooooring, but still a golden opportunity to make your client environment more standardized and less complex. Make sure to remove GPOs and GPO settings that are not necessary, remove or replace scripts, applications or components that are not needed. Also, if you have a Premier support agreement with Microsoft, do use the RAP as a Service for Windows Desktop to let Microsoft do an analysis of your environment and suggesting remediation.
App compat when moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 or 10 is practically 99%+ success in terms of regular Win32 based applications. Still actual testing of applications needs to be done for business critical applications.
There are new WMI classes in Windows 10 that can be used to collect software inventory. The information can be displayed using PowerShell. Also, there is a feature that inventories what framework or runtime an application is dependent on, for instance which version of .NET Framework or Visual C++ Runtime and it can even see if there are dependencies for OpenSSL. Imagine having these feature in place when the HeartBleed bug appeared earlier this year.
Display all installed applications on a Windows 10 machine:
Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgram | select Name, Version, ProgramID | out-GridView
Display all apps and dependent frameworks on a Windows 10 machine for a specific application (replace the ProgramID in the filter section with another one from the above example):
Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgramFramework -Filter "ProgramID = '00000b9c648fd31856f33503b3647b005e740000ffff'" | select ProgramID, FrameworkName, FrameworkVersion | out-GridView
or to bake them together to get both the application name and associated frameworks:
$Programs = Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgram | select Name, ProgramID
$result = foreach ($Program in $Programs) {
$ProgramID = $program.programID
$Name = $program.Name
$FMapp = Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgramFramework -Filter "ProgramID = '$programID'"
foreach ($FM in $FMapp) {
$out = new-object psobject
$out | add-member noteproperty Name $name
$out | add-member noteproperty ProgramID $ProgramID
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkPublisher $FM.FrameworkPublisher
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkName $FM.FrameworkName
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkVersion $FM.FrameworkVersion
$out
}
}
$result | out-gridView
What I forgot to mention in yesterday’s session was that these feature are being back ported to previous Windows versions, as that is where you’d typically want to run the inventory, but much of the feature regarding this new way of doing inventory is still work in progress.
With Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 and the new types of devices that make users more mobile gives other challenges. It is one thing that the OS and devices are great at supporting a mobile work scenario, but without apps that also adhere to this environment you will have challenges. Make sure that the technology to deliver the user experience is evaluated, upgrade the user interfaces where necessary or port them (or parts of them) to modern apps.
In terms of moving to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 you will face the most application compatibility challenges with IE11 and web apps. After the summer Microsoft announced that from January 2016 only the latest version of IE will be supported on the currently supported OS’s.
Regardless if you run IE8, IE9, IE10 or IE11 you are very likely to (without knowing it) running all or many your internal web apps in IE7 mode, due to this nasty little settings still being default in Windows 10 and IE in Windows 10.
That is the setting that you will find by going go Tools menu and then Compatibility View settings. The setting which I strongly recommend to uncheck (set it via Group Policies) is called “Display intranet sites in Compatibility View”. I have seen this setting causing problems with web apps because modern web apps and systems stop supporting IE7 and thereby not working in IE11.
Well, deploy IE11 today and start working with compatibility testing your web apps!
Enterprise Mode in IE11 is a compatibility mode that runs web apps in IE8 mode to make them work on IE11. With the November 2014 CU update for IE11 you will be able to not only set web apps to run in IE8 mode but also any document mode such as IE10, IE9, IE7 or even IE5.
More on IE11 Enterprise Mode and Enterprise Mode Site List Manager.
Not long ago Microsoft released a little tool that will inventory all the web sites a user visits to provide means to get a grip on web app compatibility. The inventory is activated on specific clients (or all if that is OK in terms of integrity etc) and is collected via WMI to for instance System Center Configuration Manager. There are pre-made reports that can be used. More on Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit for Internet Explorer 11.
A good thing to prepare for Windows 10 is to deploy Windows 8.1. Some time ago I wrote a blog post on how to customize the user interface in Windows 8.1 to make it work as expected and make it easier for the end users. Read the blog post Taming the user interface for Windows 8.1 enterprise users.
Of course you can and should install Windows 10 Technical Preview for a number of reasons. Test applications, test in-place upgrade and last but not least, provide Microsoft with feedback either using the built in Windows Feedback app or via UserVoice. This is a unique opportunity to still influence how and what Windows 10 will be!
Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 have a security feature that is dependent on that a machine is installed in UEFI mode, that is Secure Boot. UEFI replaces the 30 year old BIOS that has “always” been around. Note that Microsoft talks very much about in-place-upgrades from previous versions to Windows 10. However, as switching to UEFI demands that you reinstall your OS you will not be able to get the full benefit of Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 if you are running your machines in legacy boot mode.
Figure out if your machines are running in UEFI and if not, make sure that you have an infrastructure that supports it and that you switch to UEFI mode in your client machines BIOSs’.
The easiest way to determine if you are running in UEFI mode is to run msinfo32.exe (only in Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10). There is a new line that clearly displays that.
If running Windows 7 (or later) you can determine if running in UEFI mode by starting diskmgmt.msc and note if you have an EFI system partition. If you do, you are running in UEFI mode.
If you have Configuration Manager you can look at the pre-made report Hardware – Disk > Disk information for a specific computer – Partitions to see if you have machines that either are running in Legacy/BIOS mode which will have partitions named “Installable File System” or UEFI machines that will have GPT partitions and in particular a GPT System partition.
If you haven’t already done so look into Azure AD and what is has to offer. The cloud connections in Windows 10 will be significant!
There are quite a few things you can do to prepare yourself for Windows 10 so that you are ready when Windows 10 is released sometime next year. Happy Windows 10’ing!
I’ve encountered quite an interesting issue when deploying a custom iOS (IPA) app using System Center Configuration Manager and Intune. The problem is that the deployment status for the app never reports as “Success” and is hung at “In progress”. As it turns out there is a mismatch in the version info that exist within the IPA file and the plist file that is included when deploying the IPA.
The CFBundleVersion listed within the IPA in the file info.plist
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>1.2.3</string>
must match the bundle-version found in the plist file that is used when creating the app deployment in Configuration Manager.
<key>bundle-version</key>
<string>1.2.3</string>
If these values do not match the status will never be reported as successful in the ConfigMgr console. After the September 2014 maintenance window for Intune I also suspect that this version mismatch is causing the app to be re-deployed over and over again, however this has yet to be confirmed.
Note: You can easily check the content of info.plist within the IPA by renaming the IPA to ZIP and extract its contents. Use a plist viewer of your choice (there are several free for trial) to check the CFBundleVersion.
When adding the Monitoring and Administration Feature of MBAM 2.5 and checking the System Center Configuration Manager Integraton features in the setup wizard you typically enter the URL to the Reporting Server, for instance http://configmgrsrv/ReportServer. If you get the error
The SQL Reporting Services URL that point to the MBAM reports is not valid
it actually means that you before installing the Monitoring and Administration features must install the MBAM Reports feature. That is even though you are integrating MBAM into System Center Configuration Manager. Why is that? Because when integrating MBAM with ConfigMgr, the only reports that are managed in ConfigMgr are the compliance reports.
If you are using System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Intune to deploy email profiles to your iOS devices you should be aware of the fact that the email policy will vanish from your users’ iOS devices and then user then need to log in to the company portal for the email profile to get deployed once again to the iOS device. This is true in the following scenarios:
No status on a fix for this bug at the moment.
A common setup when using System Center Configuration Manager to deploy is to have an OSD collection which has a required deployment. Moving clients to that Collection will let them be reinstalled or installed. After deployment is done you typically want the machine removed from that collection. There are a few ways of doing that but my favorite is using an Orchestrator runbook.
Note: In this guide I assume that you have installed System Center Orchestrator 2012 SP1 or 2012 R2 in your environment.
1. First you need to download and install the Orchestrator Integration for Configuration Manager which will add the items we are using to remove the machines from a Collection in Orchestrator Runbook Designer.
2. Start Orchestrator Runbook Designer and setup the connection to the ConfigMgr primary site server by going to Options > SC 2012 Configuration Manager.
3. Add a connection to your SCCM server and make sure to test the connection using the Test connection button before proceeding.
4. Now Create a new Runbook and go to Activities > Runbook control and drag “Initialize data” to the Orchestration pane. Do the same by choosing SC12012 Configuration Manager under Activities, and then drag “Delete Collection Rule” out on the Orchestration pane.
5. Hover over the Initialize data icon and then drag the arrow to the Delete Collection Rule. It should look like the below image.
6. Right click Initialize Data and choose Properties. Add two details and name them CollectionID and ClientName.
7. Right click Delete Collection Rule and choose Properties. Start by choosing the connection you created in step 3. Note: Do not type in the text as below, instead right click the area right to Collection and choose Subscribe > Published Data. Choose CollectionID and click OK. Repeat for Membership Rule. Choose Finish when done.
If you type in the text manually you will get this error when executing the runbook: The SMS Provider reported an error. Details: Generic failure
8. Before proceeding I strongly recommend that you execute the runbook in test mode, supplying a client name and collection ID of a machine located in the collection you want the client removed from.
Note: Do not forget to check in the runbook after testing and when you are done, or it will fail to execute during operating system deployment.
Now that the runbook is running successfully you can use it in your Task Sequence. Note: This requires that you have integrated Microsoft Deployment Toolkit with Configuration Manager and that you are using an MDT Task Sequence.
Modify a task sequence and create a New group. The recommended section to run the Runbook is in the State Restore phase of the Task Sequence. To be on the safe side first run a “Gather”, then you must add “Use Toolkit Package” and last but not least execute the actual runbook by adding the “Execute Runbook” step.
Also note that runbooks are run with the SCCM network access account so you must add that account to the Orchestrator user group that you have assigned, check the permissions and which group name to add to the relevant Orchestrator group in Runbook Designer by right clicking the name of the runbook tab and then choose Permissions.
If you do not you will get this error in the ZTIExecuteRunbook.log (where all events related to the runbooks are stored):
Unexpected response from web service. 405 Method Not Allowed
< ?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ standalone=”yes”?>
< error xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata“>
<code></code>
<message xml:lang=”sv-SE”>The requested operation requires Publish permissions on the
Runbook</message>
< /error> ZTIExecuteRunbook 2014-07-03 10:01:56 0 (0x0000)
Happy orchestration and deploying!
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